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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
Responding to a post from the US Culture thread since it was more apt here:
As an institution in general? Right now they're pretty shit, yes.
Individual republicans can still be decent people though. Arnold Schwarzenegger is pro-choice and pro-LGBT (really, the main reason he's not a democrat is probably because he grew up in a socialist regime so it hits a bit too close to home for him) and he cares about protecting the environment. Colin Powell holds many of the same positions and has been fiercely critical of the main GOP establishment for over a decade.
Evan Mc Mullin left the Republican party this year presumably because he hated what they became. He's been one of the few conservatives to take off the kid gloves and call out the white nationalism of the Trump campaign. Mitt Romney didn't exactly go about the whole Trump cabinet thing the best way, but in the end he refused to bend the knee to Trump and prior to that spent the entirety of the campaign lambasting Trump. Both of them accept climate change and have indicated they have no plans to overturn Obergefell. Romney also accepts evolution and has come out in support for muslims because of their religious persecution, which even if lip service is much better than the xenophobia and contempt the GOP has been treating them with.
I can comfortably say that I legitimately respect these people on at least some level, because they actually care about principles (comparatively) and the well-being of the country. If the GOP as a whole was more like these people we probably wouldn't be in our present situation. The problem is the GOP has basically inherited the white revanchists from the old days of the democrats and so they have to keep placating them, if they aren't those revanchists to begin with. It was probably overly generous to call them a conservative party for the last few years, since they've become entirely reactionary.
edited 22nd Dec '16 2:15:30 PM by Draghinazzo
Oh, I know that some individual Republicans are good. It's just that as a whole, the GOP is... rather self-serving and doesn't have the best interests of the people in mind, to put it lightly.
That much is also true of the democrats, and of political parties in general. It's more accurate to say that their core constituencies (perceived) interests and financial backers align with the overall American population's well being far less often than the democrats.
edited 22nd Dec '16 2:18:48 PM by CaptainCapsase
Not to mention "...and believe what we tell them to believe." Which is yet another warning sign of authoritarianism. This is not a drill, people.
Getting the actual facts out there ahead of GOP/Russian propaganda and misinformation is going to be crucial if we want to take our country back. It won't matter how badly Trump fucks everybody over if he just lies about it afterwards and the public swallows it hook, line, and sinker.
"We'll take the next chance, and the next, until we win, or the chances are spent."Trump's latest Tweet
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Trump the Builder, everyone! He'll make a Great Wall to keep the Southlings (and Worse) away! He also may or may not be involved in Time Travel!
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.![]()
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it isn't exactly more weapons, it is mostly just replacing old stuff with new stuff.
Those missiles and warheads have expiration dates, because the fissile material in nuclear warheads have a relatively short half-lives and the missiles themselves need to be replaced thanks to fuel corrosion, electronics that wear out and parts that are simply too old to function reliably.
That modernization plan was simply made to replace older stuff with newer one while those were decommissioned.
Yes, but that is a case of technology marches than anything else, newer stuff is simply smaller.
edited 22nd Dec '16 4:14:56 PM by AngelusNox
Inter arma enim silent legesSorry for the double post but here it is.
I am surprised that lock her up isn't one of them but that one is from his voterbase mostly.
However, the promises his campaign hinged on are in other words pretty unattainable and those were exactly the ones his more deluded voter based wanted him in the office for.
I guess those poor dumbfucks in the Rust and Coal belts are in for some hard dose of reality, because Trump has as much chance to make those promises become reality as I have a chance to become the Queen of England.
The 5 Easiest and 5 Most Difficult Promises for Donald Trump to Keep
WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald J. Trump made many sweeping promises on his way to victory on Election Day. After he takes the oath of office on Jan. 20, here are five of the most difficult and five of the easiest promises to keep:
THE DIFFICULT ONES
Prevent American companies from moving jobs to other countries.
Companies move to other countries to pursue higher profits, and Mr. Trump cannot force them to stay. The question is whether he can make it profitable to do so. It is difficult because labor is much cheaper in other countries. Carrier pays workers at its Indiana factory an average hourly wage of $23 — roughly four times what it plans to pay workers with the same jobs in Mexico.
Mr. Trump has promised tax cuts and regulatory relief, but those are minor expenses for most companies, particularly in comparison to their payrolls. Mr. Trump also has threatened to impose new taxes on imports, but he cannot target particular companies. Any such tariffs would have to be broad — and therefore broadly painful.
Revive American steel-making and coal-mining industries.
The productivity of the American coal industry has increased roughly tenfold since the end of World War II. The work that once required 10 miners now requires just one. Steel making has undergone a similar transformation. That is by far the most important reason employment in both industries has declined precipitously. Most of those jobs are never coming back.
Demand for coal has also declined thanks to a revolution in the production of natural gas and, to a lesser extent, other alternative energy sources. This, too, is a development that Mr. Trump lacks the power to reverse. Continue reading the main story The Trump White House Stories on the presidential transition and the forthcoming Trump administration.
Increase American economic growth to more than 4 percent a year.
There are only two ways to increase economic growth: Increase the number of workers, or increase productivity, the amount the average worker produces. The news is not good on either front. The growth of the American work force is slowing as baby boomers retire and families have fewer children. And Mr. Trump has promised new restrictions on immigration, limiting another source of workers. At the same time, productivity has increased over the last decade at an average annual pace of just 1.3 percent — and there is little evidence that faster growth is in the offing.
The result is that annual economic growth has averaged 2.1 percent in the six full years since the last recession, and is on a similar trajectory this year. There are few obvious means for Mr. Trump to deliver on his promise.
Invest in infrastructure to create jobs.
Mr. Trump will find bipartisan support in Congress for his proposal to create jobs and stimulate the economy by building and repairing highways, bridges, water systems and other public works. But many Republicans may balk at a big spending program that adds to the federal budget deficit.
Some Democrats will resist Mr. Trump’s proposal to offer tax breaks to private companies in return for infrastructure investments, notably because the federal government is able to borrow money at exceptionally low rates. Democrats are also likely to resist efforts to waive environmental rules or prevailing-wage protections for construction projects.
Build a border wall.
Mr. Trump promised to “build a great, great wall on our southern border” and “have Mexico pay for that wall.” Fulfilling this promise would be difficult, though perhaps not impossible if Mr. Trump stretches the definition of “wall.”
Fences already exist along hundreds of miles of the border. Mexico has said it will not pay for a wall. And even if it did, Mr. Trump would probably need approval from Congress to spend money. Mr. Trump could do much to beef up border security on his own. Congress would support increased border security and the installation of more fencing, but construction of a wall would meet resistance from both parties.
THE EASIER ONES
Withdraw from the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
Mr. Trump pledged that on his first day in office he would give notice that the United States intends to withdraw from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade agreement the Obama administration negotiated with other Pacific Rim nations that is awaiting ratification.
Though Mr. Trump has the authority to carry out this promise, other participants, including Japan and Australia, have expressed hope that he will reconsider. If not, they may pursue regional trade deals that exclude the United States.
End the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.
The program, which President Obama announced to protect undocumented immigrants who entered the country as minors, was created by presidential fiat and it can be ended just as easily. Mr. Trump has repeatedly promised to do so. He has not said whether he will deprive current participants of protection, or simply prevent new enrollments.
Allow the Keystone XL pipeline to move forward.
Pipelines that run between the United States and Canada must obtain presidential approval. In November 2015, President Obama refused to grant permission to the Keystone XL pipeline, which would carry oil from the tar sands of Canada to the southern edge of Nebraska, where it would connect to existing pipelines.
Mr. Trump has encouraged the company behind the project, Trans Canada, to submit a new application once he takes office. He also has suggested, however, that Trans Canada should share its profits with taxpayers.
Nominate a Supreme Court justice.
Mr. Trump says that in his first 100 days, he will begin the process of selecting a replacement for Justice Scalia from his list of 21 judges “who will uphold and defend the U.S. Constitution.”
This promise will be easy to keep. Just winnowing the names of court candidates could qualify as beginning the process of replacing Justice Antonin Scalia, who died in February.
Reduce federal business and personal taxes.
Mr. Trump has promised to reduce federal taxation of businesses and households. Congressional Republicans have expressed support for a broadly similar approach. The details have derailed past efforts to overhaul the tax code, but Republican control of both Congress and the White House increases the chances that Mr. Trump will succeed.
Trump needs to learn that the Super Hornet and the F-35 aren't comparable platforms, even in the case of the former's most recent variants and refits. And in terms of purchase costs (not development costs, Lockheed and the Pentagon shit the bed there), they are comparable, or will be once the F-35 enters full production (if Trump doesn't sink it on an impulse). And logistics/sustainment wise, the F-35 might be cheaper if they get the software running.
edited 22nd Dec '16 4:21:00 PM by Rationalinsanity
Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.![]()
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Not really. Smaller warheads just means you can fit them in smaller missiles and more modern aircraft instead of the old as fuck B-52 or you don't need a missile as big with as much fuel as the older ones.
Also they don't get easily lost or have the increase of being used because they are smaller, because that is an area where the US military is surprisingly competent at. They aren't small as in you can fit them in a backpack, they are still weighting several hundred kilograms and require heavy machinery and high level clearance to be moved around.
Inter arma enim silent legesRe: F-35 thing: Dammit, Trump, stop threatening to sit on the (American job making) basket we (and most of our allies) put all of our multirole fighter eggs in. Seriously, getting more F-18s wouldn't even solve anything for the Air Force (only the Navy and Marines use the F-18) or our allies with ski-jump carriers (the F-18 can take off from ski jumps like the HMS Queen Elizabeth has, but to my knowledge, can't land on a carrier without arrestor cables (it requires a STOBAR or CATOBAR carriernote as opposed to a STOVL or VOTL carriernote . Basically, if the F-35 program is cut, a lot of American jobs will be lost and the sales cannot be replaced, nor can the program be replaced (military procurement is a long-term process) and our military, whether you like the military or not, will be stuck with increasingly overstressed legacy airframes that will put our pilots in unnecessary risk. And in more businessy terms, he'd be killing a program wherein we've already paid most of the (admittedly much higher than expected) fixed costs and economies of scale are posed to reduce the variable costs to something reasonable, provided we don't reduce orders too much. If we actually cancel it (right before meaningful deliveries are actually expected to start happening, no less), we've still paid the most expensive part, but don't actually get any results.
@Angelus: I was under the impression that it was the same kilotonnage in a larger number of (harder to intercept) delivery systems and warheads. Perhaps that's been dropped, but that definitely creates more points of failure, and a larger number of lower yield warheads by its very nature creates problems.
Well, fortunately for them, I don't think the president holds the power to unilaterally cancel military procurements.
I think you're seriously overstating this whole thing. The number of nukes the US possesses is currently large enough that almost any change is not meaningful, and storage procedures are such that stockpiling 100 small warheads in a bunker that held 50 larger ones doesn't actually make a meaningful difference in the odds of a mistake happening, whereas aging warheads do increase the odds of something bad happening. The F-35 thing is probably more meaningful to actual global security than us being able to wipe out humanity five times over instead of four times over or something - with the F-35, serious cuts could undermine the security of America and many of our allies, while the nuke thing doesn't really change anything about the already existing math of mutually assured destruction and massive retaliation.
edited 22nd Dec '16 5:40:03 PM by Balmung

That's a situation where I really don't want to end up, because it means the parties end up arranged such that economic justice and social justice really are mutually exclusive, and we are desperately in need of an approach that unifies the two. Note this depends on Trump not fucking up in ways that become apparent within his own term in office. I think it's quite likely he will fuck up in an obvious manner, but I wouldn't bet on it, in the same way I wouldn't have bet against him winning the election.
edited 22nd Dec '16 12:49:17 PM by CaptainCapsase